


The Lighthouse Keeper

by andthatisterrible



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: F/F, Lighthouses, cthulhu - Freeform, except without all the bad parts of lovecraft because that dude was a toolbox, lovercraftian overtones, vaguely new england gothic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-06
Updated: 2019-08-10
Packaged: 2020-08-10 10:34:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 19,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20134048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andthatisterrible/pseuds/andthatisterrible
Summary: Shaw has a simple life working as a lighthouse keeper and enjoying her isolation until one day a corpse washes up on her island and a mysterious woman appears at her doorstep. Soon she finds herself in the middle of a dark mystery that threatens to ruin her tranquil life.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I saw some lighthouse aesthetic post on tumblr last week and wrote this in a 2.5 days haze of words. I actually didn't know a single damn thing about lighthouses (other than that they're Cool™) until I did some quick research so the accuracy on that part is...suspect. But hopefully fun! Fic is fully written and at about 19k-ish words I think which means the second chapter is a good chunk longer. I'll be posting that sometime in the next week.

It had gotten cold early in the year, the summer fading into fall almost overnight. Shaw had dug her heavy coat out far sooner than she'd expected to and found herself buying extra wood for the stove at night. It was the boat ride that was the worst, though, rowing the small wood boat out across the windy stretch of water between the shore and the island with the chilling winds cutting through all her layers. The crossing was dangerous on days like this when the wind picked up, but Shaw had never been one to get scared. Before her, the tall, white lighthouse with its one distinctive black stripe slowly became visible through the afternoon fog, welcoming her back.

The boathouse on the island barely merited the name as it was a rickety structure of wood that should not have been able to withstand half the storms it had been through. Shaw figured the thing was too damned stubborn to die, a sentiment that she could easily understand. She tied off the boat and hauled her purchases out of the bottom.

The island was small, just enough room for the lighthouse and the short walk down to the boathouse. Shaw had kept a vegetable garden on the sole patch of grass near the front door at one point, but the vegetables it yielded had been paltry and something had kept stealing her meager harvest (which should have been impossible, but Shaw had never managed to catch the perpetrator. Seagulls remained her best guess).

The heavy wooden door at the base of the tower groaned as she pushed it open and she added oiling the hinges to the seemingly interminable list of duties she had for herself. There was always work to be done at a lighthouse.

The ground floor of the lighthouse was the largest and also the least used. While the ocean rarely rose so high, there had been storms before her time there where the island had been a few inches underwater and the lighthouse floor flooded. Only a table and chairs were kept there now, and some supplies strung up to hang from the ceiling.

The second floor was where the majority of the supplies were stored, everything she needed to survive and keep the lighthouse running every night. She unloaded most of the things she'd bought in town here: wood, oil, polish, and extra blankets. There'd been plenty of blankets here before she'd gone on her month's leave, but the man who had been her substitute must have taken them with him. She should gut the bastard next time she ran into him.

The next floor up was her kitchen (though it scarcely deserved the name). A wood burning stove with a chimney out the side of the lighthouse and an ice chest that was useful only for a day at most were the main features of the floor. There were another two chairs and a table as well where she sometimes sat to take her meals. The food and fresh water that made up the rest of her supplies she left here.

Above the kitchen was her bedroom, the ceiling mostly taken up by the massive clockwork gears that powered the rotating lamp of the lighthouse. Her bed was tucked away in a corner under the gears and there was a single chest where she kept her clothing and personal items that was rarely ever more than half full.

And at the very top of the lighthouse was the light room itself, with its massive storm-proof windows and the lens and lantern that she was responsible for maintaining. She hadn't needed to climb all the way up here yet (she should, in fact, have been sleeping since she'd need to be awake all night), but she'd been unable to resist coming up to look out across the world. Behind her was the mainland with the brick buildings of the town sprawled across the hills leading down to the beach. It was only partially visible in the fog today (and Shaw wondered if she shouldn't light the lantern early to account for that). And in front of her was the endless grey ocean, stretching away to the horizon.

It was a familiar sight now, after five years as a lighthouse keeper on the island, one that usually filled her with calm, but since she'd come back there'd been something slightly off about the view. Nothing looked different that Shaw could place, but she had a hint of inexplicable unease when she looked out over the rolling waves and silent town. It almost felt as if the entire town and surrounding land and water had been switched with exact duplicates while she'd been away. Impossible, she knew, and yet she couldn't shake the feeling that something was off.

She finally tore her eyes away from the ocean and returned to her bedroom below. She pulled off the clothes that were still damp from the trip and rolled back the covers on her bed.

There was a single seashell in the middle of the bed, a beautiful conch shell larger than Shaw's hand. She stared at it blankly for a moment and then carried it over to the windowsill and placed it next to the four other shells and the giant shark's tooth that were already there. There was no way that someone could have broken in and left the shell there without leaving some sign of their passage, and yet, despite setting traps and lying in wait, she'd never found any trace of the intruder.

The seagulls around here must be exceedingly clever, she told herself as she climbed into bed. What other explanation was there?

* * *

Shaw awoke before the sun went down and set about getting the lighthouse prepared for the night ahead. She polished the huge lens, filled the oil, and trimmed down the wick on the lantern. Next, she turned the crank to pull the heavy weighted bags that hung on thick ropes down the central spiral of the staircase back to the top of the tower and secured them. When dropped later, their slow descent would turn the gears and power the lantern for half the night. Last, she cleaned the massive windows so they were polished and gleaming in the rays of the setting sun.

The little time she had left before she had to light the lantern was spent preparing a quick meal and seeing to a few small cleaning tasks around the place. She would probably sleep extra tomorrow during the day to make up for her trip. It meant no real work around the island would be done until two days from now, but Shaw could grudgingly admit that she needed her sleep. Falling asleep on the job could result in shipwrecks and deaths.

When dusk started to set in, Shaw headed up to the light room and lit the wick of the lantern. The bright light hit the lens and a beam stretched out to sea, visible for miles around. She released the weights and watched them start their slow descent, the clockwork of the lighthouse whirring to life as they pulled against it, and the great lens starting its slow rotation.

Shaw watched the clockwork spinning for a few minutes before turning back to the windows. Outside the sky was growing darker behind the heavy grey clouds. Until this weather lifted she'd have to work extra hours to ensure visibility for all passing ships. Of course in this part of the world the grey skies could last for all of autumn and winter. Soon the heavy fall storms would start as well.

She sat down in her leather armchair under the light and settled in for a night of watching the ocean and tending the lantern. Below, the dark waves crashed against the base of the tower endlessly.

* * *

After a meal that most would have considered breakfast but Shaw thought of as dinner, she did some preliminary cleaning of the lens and light room. It shouldn't be needed again until that night, but sudden storms weren't uncommon here and the lighthouse had to be ready at all times.

She had one last task before she could sleep so she headed all the way down to the ground and across the small island to the boat house. A rowboat was just pulling up to the shore as she arrived and she hurried to help tie it up safely.

"Usual delivery for you," the man in the boat said as he handed across a bundle of supplies. Her biweekly trip to the town yesterday had gotten her resupplied on the necessities, but someone from the mainland brought over more perishable goods every other day. It was an intrusion into her solitude, but she was grateful for the fresh food.

"I'll never understand why you like it out on this creepy island so much," the man continued. "I'd go crazy in a week."

"Who says I didn't go crazy years ago, Fusco?"

Lionel Fusco was a low ranking officer with the local police and as such had earned the dubious honor of rowing across the narrow and hazardous stretch of water to bring her supplies. He'd annoyed her at first, but she'd grown used to him over the years.

"Better you than me," he grumbled. Fusco complained a lot, but Shaw didn't mind. Having another human voice around for a brief time every other day wasn't the worst thing ever, she'd decided.

"You need any help getting that up the stairs?" he asked.

They both considered the small bundle of supplies that Shaw held. It weighed almost nothing and anyway Shaw was sure she was stronger than Fusco by a good deal, but he always offered.

"Somehow I'll manage."

The conversation was almost verbatim of the one they'd had the last time he'd come, and the one before that and the one before that. It was a ritual now. She knew that next he'd say something about not cutting into her sleep time and excuse himself.

"Well, I don't want to be infringing on your beauty sleep so I'll...what's that?"

The break from the pattern startled Shaw and she turned to follow Fusco's gaze. Further along the island shore she saw a strip of bright color among the rocks.

"Shit," she said and hurried to investigate even though she knew it was too late.

The corpse was bloated from the water, hideous to look at, and she heard Fusco gagging behind her as she bent to examine it more closely. It had been a woman most likely, judging by the long hair. The features were almost unrecognizable but what was quite noticeable was the ugly wound at the throat. This person had had their throat slit, quite efficiently too in Shaw's opinion.

"We're going to need to take them back to the mainland," Shaw said as she continued her examination. The clothes were decently made, but heavily patched. Whoever this person was they hadn't had money to spare for new shirts. "I expect your lot will want to know about this."

"I'm not rowing back with a corpse in my boat!"

"Fine, I'll do it." She had a feeling it would be a long time before she could sleep again.

* * *

It was only an hour or two before dusk when Shaw finally returned to her island. While there was no evidence to support her involvement in what was inarguably a murder, the police had still been highly suspicious of her and asked her all sorts of nosy questions. The chief of police himself had questioned her--his smug expression even more annoying than usual--and she thought she'd caught a glimpse of the pale and wrinkled old face of the mayor in the station. His presence had startled her at first, but murders were rare enough that she could understand why the mayor might get involved.

The suspicious questioning hadn't surprised her; she was an outsider as far as they were concerned. The town was tightly knit and many families had been here for generations, but Shaw had only come here for the job. Most of the townsfolk didn't like her and considered her a bit odd for her isolated life, but that only meant they left her alone which worked just fine for her.

As much as she would have liked to have gone to bed, she chose instead to do a full sweep of the island, looking for any clues that might have washed up. No one had recognized the dead woman which meant likely she wasn't from town. Shaw's guess was that she had been thrown overboard from a passing ship and some trick of the currents had caused her to wash up on the inner edge of the island rather than the rocks. The only other option was that someone from the town had murdered a stranger and thrown them in the ocean.

She was almost ready to call it quits and get to work setting up the lantern for the night when something caught her eye. The side of the island pointing out to sea was a small cliff of boulders and jagged rocks that were uninhabitable for a human but often home to all manner of seabirds and sometimes even seals. Down on the rocks right above the waterline there was something spread out on a rock.

Shaw sighed and started the slippery climb down to investigate. It'd probably end up being nothing more than a dead seal, but, considering the last thing that had washed up, she felt obliged to check. The climb down wasn't hard, but it was treacherous and Shaw took it slowly.

As she got closer she became more certain of her guess that it was a dead seal, but...it looked wrong in some way. When she finally clambered down to the rock next to it, she was even more puzzled. The seal appeared to be just a skin, perfectly preserved and stretched flat across the rock. Shaw flipped the heavy pelt over and found the inside neat and cleaned. Had this been from a taxidermied animal that had lost its stuffing in the sea?

The skin was in excellent condition and quite thick so it would have been a waste to leave it there. Shaw rolled it up and set off back up the rocks to her lighthouse. She left the pelt folded on the chest in her bedroom and headed up to get the lantern ready for the night.

* * *

The ocean was quiet in the early morning fog, too quiet for Shaw's liking. Normally there were at least seabirds swooping overhead and calling out across the water, but the splash of her oars dipping into the water was the only sound now.

The fog was so thick she couldn't see the shore, which made navigation tricky. It was easy to think she was going in the right direction out here, but she knew how such false confidence drove sailors onto the rocks or out to sea, so she'd taken her compass out and set it on the bench next to her.

A wind picked up and cut through her clothing chilling her to the bone, but the fog remained untouched around her. Small waves bumped her boat up and down perhaps a tad less gently than they had minutes before.

She glanced down at the compass and saw that the needle was pointing the opposite way from where she'd thought it would be. She frowned and adjusted the boat, but when she checked the needle had changed direction again. As she watched, the needle spun freely around in circles, gaining speed.

The boat lurched sideways and drew her attention back to the ocean. The waves had grown much larger in the few seconds she'd looked away, and her small boat was tossed about between the crests and valleys. She tried desperately to regain control of her boat and turn back the way she came, but she saw an enormous wave headed towards her, ready to crash down on her tiny boat.

She used the seconds she had before the wave hit to take a deep breath and dive into the water herself. The cold water closed over her head and she was alone in a suddenly quiet world, bathed in green light. Bubbles floated to the surface all around her, but there was no sign of fish or sea life of any type. She thought she could see a faint light coming through the water from above and swam up towards it.

But no matter how fast she swam or for how long, the surface never seemed to get closer. She could feel her arms tiring and her breath burning in her lungs.

A great noise like a booming roar echoed through the depths and Shaw froze. She treaded water and risked looking down below her feet. She couldn't see far, but somewhere down there in the green-black murk, something stirred. Shaw turned away and started swimming up again, faster than before.

There was no way she should have been able to hear the pursuit, but she could--something was crawling and wriggling through the water below her and around her. She caught glimpses of shadowy tentacles moving towards her and felt something brush by her legs. She swam faster and faster, her lungs desperate for air and her arms aching, but the thing was above her now as well. It was everywhere and its dark form surrounded her and blocked out all the light leaving her drowning alone in the darkness. She felt something slimy twine around her ankle and pull her down into the depths and--

Shaw jolted awake in her armchair and stared around wildly, looking for something to fight. The light room remained empty, the clockwork whirring soothingly and the lantern rotating above. She jumped up to check the lantern's oil level and make sure the weights were not fully descended yet. It was inexcusable to fall asleep at her post no matter how little sleep she'd had over the last few days. Everything seemed to be in order and her pocket watch said she'd only been asleep for half an hour so it could have been much worse. She had thought she'd heard something when she'd woken up, but everything was silent now. Perhaps it had been the strange dream that had woken her.

She wasn't supposed to leave the light room at night except for emergencies, but she decided making some coffee was an important step to take to ensure she didn't fall asleep again. She'd just put the kettle on the stove when she heard a loud banging from the base of the lighthouse.

Someone was knocking on the door.

Shaw froze, completely at a loss. There was no way anyone should have been able to get to the island in the pitch dark. Perhaps someone from the town had found something out about the murder and come to update her? That was hard to believe given how little they cared for her. Maybe they'd decided to pin the murder on her, though she would have expected them to wait until morning to make the risky trip.

The pounding on the door came again. Shaw grabbed the large knife she kept in her kitchen and headed down the steep circular staircase to investigate.

There was a peephole in the thick wooden door, but with no lights burning outside it was practically useless. Shaw held her knife behind her as she unbolted the door and opened it a crack. She hadn't thought anything could surprise her more than the knocking had, but the tall, pale woman standing on her doorstep and not wearing a stitch of clothing definitely came as a shock.

"Can I come in, please?" the woman asked. She had her arms crossed across her body as if she was cold.

Shaw gaped at her for another moment and then tried to get control of the situation. "Why?"

"Because it's cold out here."

Fair point. Shaw tried for a more relevant question. "How did you get here?"

"I swam."

"Yeah right." The water here was too cold for prolonged exposure this time of year and the currents were dangerous for swimmers. "How did you actually get here?"

The woman shivered pathetically. "Can we discuss this inside, please?"

Shaw considered slamming the door and leaving the strange woman to go back whatever way she'd come here by, but combined with the other odd happenings of the day, she decided it was worth her time to see it through.

She pulled the door open a little wider and stepped back to let the woman enter. Once her visitor was fully inside, Shaw shut the door and bolted it again.

"Much better," the woman said and smiled at her.

In the candlelight of the lighthouse Shaw could see her visitor more clearly--she looked taller now that she wasn't hunched over from the cold, with long brown hair that hung in damp locks around her (maybe she really _had_ swum here). She was pretty, Shaw could admit that, but there was something slightly odd about the way she moved and held herself. Of course everything about this was odd and Shaw was starting to wonder if she was still asleep in the light room and having another strange dream.

"Do you have a shirt I can borrow?"

"Not until you tell me how you got here and what you want." Though leaving the woman standing there naked was probably not the best course of action (and it was also somewhat distracting). She spotted the towel she left near the door for rainy days and handed it over. "Here. Now talk."

The woman wrapped the towel around herself like a dress, leaving her shoulders bare. "What did you want to talk about, Shaw?"

Shaw stiffened. "How do you know my name?"

"Oh, everyone in town knows the name of Sameen Shaw, the lighthouse keeper."

"You're from the town then?" Shaw found that unlikely. There was something off about the woman that made Shaw quite sure she wasn't a local.

"Well, I've been to your town."

Shaw was tempted to snatch the towel back and chuck the woman out into the cold. "Why the hell are you here?"

Before the woman could answer, the wail of the kettle from above echoed through the tower.

"Sounds important," the woman said, her smile almost mocking. Shaw glared at her and then motioned to the stairs with her knife.

"You go up first. Two flights and no further."

"Whatever you say."

The woman was as good as her word and didn't try to climb any higher than Shaw's little kitchen. She sat almost-daintily on a chair while Shaw took the kettle off the stove.

"Could I have some tea, please?" the woman asked as Shaw poured water through the coffee filter.

"No. You're not getting anything else until you tell me who you are and why you're here."

"My name is Root, and I'm here because I'm currently stranded on this island. Now can I please have some tea?"

Shaw thought about refusing her, but instead found herself fishing around in her supplies for a seldom-used box of tea. She held off on more questions until she placed the hot mug on the table in front of the woman.

"Wait here, and don't touch anything."

She didn't like the idea of leaving this...Root alone, but she less liked the idea of the lantern going out or starting a fire. It only took her a few minutes to check the light room. She wasn’t supposed to leave it at all during the night, but it was a clear night and she thought mysterious naked women showing up on her doorstep only hours after she’d found a corpse allowed for her to step away from her post for a few minutes to sort things out. She peered out the windows at the ocean, checking for the lights of any passing ships. Everything was dark outside the beam of light from the lighthouse, though as Shaw stared into the blackness she could swear she saw a flicker of movement far out on the water. It must have been her imagination though--something that far out to sea would need to be enormous for her to see it at this range. The lack of sleep combined with that weird dream must have been playing tricks on her mind.

Root had barely moved when Shaw returned to her kitchen. She’d curled up in her chair and wrapped her hands around her mug. She smiled at Shaw. “Everything where you left it?” It sounded like she was amused by some joke that Shaw didn’t get and Shaw fought down the urge to glare.

“I can’t spend much time away from my post, so whatever you want, make it quick.” Shaw retrieved her coffee from near the stove, but leaned against the wall rather than sitting. “How did you end up naked on my island in the middle of the night?”

“I went swimming and someone stole my clothes while I was in the water.”

There was a ring of truth to the words, but they made no sense. “The water is too cold to swim in for long here.”

“Not for me. Or it wasn’t until I lost my clothes.”

“You swim in your clothes?”

“Usually. It seems that the only time I jumped in the water without them was when someone decided to walk off with them.”

Shaw sighed in frustration. “I’m not in the mood to play games. What do you want from me?”

“Nothing much. Just a place to stay for the night.”

“I have a job to do. I can’t babysit someone while I do it and I’m not leaving a stranger with free run of my home for the night.”

Root looked up from her mug and smiled again in that amused way that Shaw had decided was meant to be condescending.

“Are you going to toss me back out into the night then?” Root asked. She looked like she knew there wasn’t a chance of that happening.

The annoying part of this all was that she was right. Shaw wasn’t going to kick her out onto the island in the middle of the night, if for no other reason than Root might get it in her head to steal or damage her boat. Better she stayed here where Shaw could keep an eye on her.

“You can stay here, on one condition.”

“And what’s that?”

“You stay exactly where I tell you to stay.”

“And where would that be?”

Shaw favored her with one last warning glare, tossed back the rest of her coffee, and headed for the stairs. “Follow me.”

She hadn’t planned to let Root any higher up than the kitchen, but the only bed in the place was in her bedroom and it bore the advantage of being visible through the gaps in the floor where the huge clockwork gears turned.

“You can sleep there for tonight,” she said, pointing at the bed. “I’ll be upstairs, but I can see down here, so don’t try anything.”

Root wandered around, exploring the small room. “Inviting me into your bed already? You don’t waste any time do you?” She paused by the darkened window to examine Shaw’s shell collection.

“I wasn’t...this isn’t....” Shaw took a second to compose herself. “This is the only bed in the place and I can keep an eye on...things from up above.”

Root turned back to the room, delight on her face. “You’ll be watching me sleep?”

Shaw stared at her blankly, refusing to give her the satisfaction of a reaction. “I’m going to be making sure you don’t cause any trouble.”

“In my sleep?”

Shaw didn’t dignify that with an answer and headed for the stairs to the light room.

“Do you have something I can sleep in?” Root called after her.

Shaw hesitated. Root was still wrapped in the towel from earlier.

“Not that I’m opposed to being naked in your bed,” Root added from almost directly behind her.

Shaw spun back around to find Root smirking at her from only a few inches away. How had she snuck up on her like that? Shaw detoured over to her clothes chest and rummaged around in it until she found an oversized shirt which she tossed to Root. “There. Anything else?” She shut the chest again and resettled the seal skin on top of it. When she turned back around she found Root watching her with an unreadable expression.

“What?”

Root shook her head and let the towel drop to the floor so she could pull her shirt on. Even though she’d seen her naked earlier, Shaw still turned her back to give Root the privacy she clearly didn’t care about.

“All done,” Root said and Shaw turned back to see her standing in the middle of the floor with Shaw’s shirt falling barely past the tops of her thighs. “Going to tuck me in, Shaw?”

Shaw made a concentrated effort not to stare at Root’s long legs. “In the morning, I’ll take you back to the mainland.”

Root took a step towards her, closing the space between them in the small room. “That won’t be necessary.”

Shaw scoffed. “I suppose you’re just going to swim back then?”

Root took another step forwards and stopped, inches away. “Something like that.”

Shaw caught herself staring at Root’s face, at her eyes, and cheekbones, and lips. Root’s hair had dried more now and, even uncombed, fell around her in shiny brown waves. Root’s lips parted ever so slightly and Shaw realized she’d stopped breathing at some point. She inhaled carefully and stepped away from Root.

“Do you...you wouldn’t happen to know anything about a dead woman who washed up on the shore here earlier, would you?” There was nothing to suggest the two events were connected, but the timing was suspicious.

Root raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t kill her if that’s what you mean.” She sounded slightly offended, but not at all surprised about the murder.

“But you do know something about her?”

Root smiled one last time and turned her back on Shaw. “Good night, Shaw.”

Shaw thought about pressing for more, but something told her that Root had said all she was going to say for the night. She headed up the stairs to the light room and checked again on the lantern and the weights before settling into her chair. Through the gaps in the floor she could see that Root had curled up in her bed and shut her eyes. Tomorrow she could get some answers out of her.

Shaw hadn’t thought she was still tired, but at some point near dawn she drifted off for a handful of minutes. When she awoke, the bed below was empty. A brief search of the lighthouse proved that Root was gone without a trace. It seemed that nothing else was missing until Shaw went to change for bed and realized the seal skin that had been on top of her chest was gone. Later, when she woke up again, she found a sixth seashell on her window ledge.

* * *

The second corpse showed up a week later, beached on the shore not far from where Shaw had found the first one. It was a man this time and once again the throat had been neatly cut and there were no identifying papers in the waterlogged clothing. Since Fusco wasn’t due to visit until the next day, Shaw was on her own lugging the heavy corpse into her rowboat and taking it back to the mainland. She’d resigned herself to another day of aggressive questioning, but this time the police seemed eager to get rid of her. When she asked if they’d identified the first victim they’d all just stared at her coldly.

She saw the police chief again on her way out, speaking through the window of a carriage with the mayor's crest on the side. He stopped his conversation long enough to smile at her in a slimy way that made her want to punch his face through the carriage window. She smiled back, baring all her teeth, and felt quite satisfied when his smile faltered uncertainly.

Even if the whole experience was useless, at least it was shorter this time and Shaw left to return to her island much earlier than she’d expected. The boat ride only took about twenty minutes of hard rowing, and she let herself fall into the motion of the waves and the sweep of the oars. Life on the ocean was simpler.

A flash of movement caught her eye and she leaned over the side of the boat. Had there been something moving down there in the water? Something...large? She felt a chill run down her spine, a sensation she’d heard of but never experienced before. She didn’t do scared, so this was something else. Her breath misted out in front of her as the temperature continued to drop and the sky turned a hard grey.

“What the hell?” she asked softly under her breath.

Around her, the waves picked up, tossing her little boat around like it was a cheap toy. She clutched the oars and worked hard to keep herself from flipping over. She thought she caught a glimpse of something moving below the waves again, something thrashing around in the depths and her dream from a week ago came back to her.

And then, as suddenly as it had started, everything was over. The ocean returned to normal and the sky opened up enough to let a little sunlight through the clouds. Shaw took a second to catch her breath and then rowed hard for home, not stopping until she hit land.

There was someone waiting for her in front of the door.

“I see you have clothes this time,” Shaw said as she approached.

“I figured it would put us on more equal footing,” Root said as she stepped aside to let Shaw unlock the door.

Shaw got the impression that Root hadn’t meant that she’d been at a disadvantage by being naked. Quite the opposite, in fact. And, well, she couldn’t fully disagree with that.

“Did you swim out here again?” Shaw asked. She held the door open for Root, since she was pretty sure there was no way she was getting out of letting her in again and she wanted some answers.

“Obviously.”

“Then why are your clothes dry?”

Root smoothed down the grey skirt she was wearing. Neither it nor the oversized navy cable-knit sweater showed any signs of having gotten wet. “Well, that’s because I left them here to change into.”

Shaw slammed the bolt on the door home before she turned around. “You left them here. On this island. Where? And how did you get them here in the first place?”

“I had your friend Lionel bring them with your supplies, hidden in a blanket.” Root walked over and patted a blanket sitting on a crate. “He had no clue, of course.”

“And then you broke in here, got dressed, went back outside, locked the door, and waited for me to get back?”

Root’s smile radiated innocence. “Well, it would have been rude to wait inside without being invited.”

Shaw threw her hands up in frustration. “Any chance you’re actually going to answer my questions this time?” she asked as she headed up the stairs. Root trailed along after her.

“Depends what the questions are.”

Shaw led her to the kitchen again, figuring it was about as neutral a space as she had. She automatically started going through the motions of putting the kettle on like she always did, though she took the extra step of taking out the tea leaves for Root.

“I’ve had two corpses show up on my island now,” Shaw said once the water was heating up. “Both right around the time you showed up. Makes me think that maybe you know something about what’s going on.”

Root’s face gave away nothing. “You’re wrong about one part of that, Shaw.”

“Oh yeah? Which part?”

“I’ve been here for far longer than these murders have been going on.”

Shaw had suspected something like that. “The seashells.” She thought she saw a slight red flush on Root’s face.

“Just my way of saying thanks.”

“Thanks? For what?”

Root tapped her long fingers on the table and chewed her bottom lip as if debating how to answer. “The year you started here, you reported some ships for illegal fishing in these waters. The nets they were using endangered the local wildlife. It’d been going on for years, but the previous lighthouse keeper never bothered to report it. Too much paperwork, I suppose. Humans are predictably awful in some ways."

There had been a lot of paperwork and a lot of noses out of joint about the whole thing. Shaw still suspected that someone on the town council had been being paid off to turn a blind eye to the illegal fishing. But why would Root care about some fishing nets? The vague suspicions Shaw had been harboring since she’d awoken to find Root gone solidified.

“You’re a goddamn seal, aren’t you? Or you think you are, anyway. That seal skin was yours.”

Root arched an eyebrow. “Really, Shaw? A seal? Whatever gave you that idea?”

“Swimming to the island, thanking me for getting rid of the nets, the seal skin that you took back with you. You said someone stole your clothes before. I assume that meant when I took the skin back inside?”

“And based on that you think I’m some kind of...what? Shapeshifter?” Root’s voice was mocking. “You should try explaining that to the police. The murderer is a seal that slits people’s throats.”

“I don’t believe in shapeshifters,” Shaw defended herself. “Bunch of storybook nonsense. But I do believe some folks _think _they can do things that aren’t possible.” She noted the tiny twitch of irritation on Root’s face. Good, she’d hit her mark. “And you know an awful lot about these murders for someone who wasn’t involved.”

Root sat back in her chair with an exasperated sigh. “I know a great deal about them, but that doesn’t mean I was involved. I...watch.”

The kettle started whistling and Shaw turned to pull it off the stove. “Watch what exactly?”

“Well, among other things, I’ve watched you for quite some time now. Years, actually.”

Shaw very firmly didn’t believe in shapeshifters, but she couldn’t help but think about all the times she’d seen seals on the rocks of the island. Had any of them ever been staring at her the way Root was right now? Though leering might have been a more accurate word for what Root was doing. Had she ever been leered at by a seal?

Shaw finished making the tea and coffee and set Root’s mug down on the table in front of her hard enough that the hot liquid sloshed over the side a little. Like the last time Root had been here, she chose to lean against the wall rather than sit at the table with Root. The distance felt like a good precaution right now.

“Does it bother you that I’ve been watching you?” Root asked curiously. She crossed one leg over the other and Shaw found her eyes drawn towards the movement, taking in the way the grey material fell and outlined Root’s legs below.

“Things don’t bother me in general.” It felt like a safe answer.

“So I’ve noticed. It’s one of the more fascinating things about you, actually.” Root sipped her tea and then made a face. Must have burnt her tongue, Shaw figured. That’d teach her to look so smug.

“All I do is sit in a little room all night and sleep all day. Can’t imagine I was very interesting to watch.”

Root shrugged and sat back in her chair. “You’d be surprised. While I can’t see most of what you do in the lighthouse, I can see when you’re outside. I got to see you're out running laps, or doing pushups on the grass during the summer….” Root’s voice drifted off for a second as if she was reliving the memory. “Oh, and the failed attempt at a vegetable garden you tried to raise a few years ago. Possibly the worst vegetables I’ve ever encountered.”

Shaw narrowed her eyes. “It was you, wasn’t it? You stole my goddamn vegetables.”

“In my defense, they were very bad and I was just saving you from eating something of inferior quality.”

“Yeah, I bet.”

She was aware that all of this conversation only made sense if Root actually _was _some sort of seal shapeshifter who'd been watching her from the water for years, but she’d decided not to think about that little conundrum yet.

“So you’re a nosy vegetable thief who’s grateful to me for stopping some illegal fishing. What made you decide to show up on my doorstep after five years?”

“Well, you took my skin, so I didn’t have much of a choice.”

“Oh, right.” That seemed obvious now that she thought of it.

“I mean I didn’t expect to wind up in your bed on our first meeting, but I won’t complain.”

“That’s not what happened!” Shaw protested.

“Isn’t it?”

Shaw scowled. “Not the way you meant it.”

“Oh, well, we can always fix that.” Root’s eyes danced over her speculatively. “I’m game if you are.”

It wasn’t the first time that Shaw stopped to consider what it might feel like to push Root down onto her bed and climb in after her. The isolated life of a lighthouse keeper didn’t lend itself to casual (or serious) encounters often, and Shaw usually had to make do on her own. She wasn’t about to tell Root how she’d thought about her quite a few times after that first visit, or what she’d imagined them doing together.

She sipped her coffee carefully to cover for her thoughts, though the way Root was smirking at her was like she could tell.

“Why did you come back then?” Shaw asked finally. She’d thought that she’d never see Root again after she’d woken to find her gone and the seal skin missing. Even though she still didn’t believe in this shapeshifter nonsense, something about the entire thing had felt final.

“Just couldn’t stay away once I’d gotten a taste.” Root’s tone was light and joking, but there was something wary in her eyes.

Shaw tapped the side of her mug with one finger as she gathered her thoughts. “Don’t suppose you have any idea why some freak localized storm almost knocked my boat over on the way here, do you?”

Root’s face went carefully blank. “The ocean can be moody. Maybe you should stay on land as much as possible for the time being.”

“Unfortunately my job is on an island, so that’s not really practical. Also, the ocean isn’t a sentient being so it can’t get moody.” Though some nights, staring out at the dark waters in a storm, she could easily imagine the ocean as an angry monster.

Root stared down into her tea mug with a tiny frown creasing her face. “Maybe it’s time to find a new job then.”

Shaw suspected she wasn’t going to get more of an answer out of her. Not yet, anyway. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Root smiled again, but it wasn’t a happy smile this time and she still looked troubled. “I missed you while you were gone over the summer. The man who took your place wasn’t nearly as interesting. I was...concerned you might not ever come back until I came up to have a look and found most of your clothes were still here.”

“Can’t say I missed you, since I didn’t even know you existed.” She was going to ignore the fact that Root had broken into the lighthouse while she was gone since this seemed to be a regular occurrence based on the seashells. “And if you missed me so much, why are you telling me to leave again?”

“They don’t like outsiders in the town.”

“Yeah, I noticed.”

“Did you also notice that neither of the murder victims were from this town?”

“Yeah, so what? You saying the murderer is a local person who’s taking their homicidal tendencies out on outsiders and I’m next?”

Root put her mug down on the table and stood up. “Not quite, but I don’t think you should poke around in this. It’ll only draw more attention to you.” She looked over at the narrow window. “I should leave so you can sleep before your night begins.”

“How’re you planning on leaving?”

Root just looked at her as if that was the silliest question she could ask.

“A seal? Really?” Shaw asked. “Let’s see you transform then.”

“That’s a very presumptuous thing to ask of a lady, Shaw.”

“Uh-huh.”

Root walked over to where Shaw was leaning on the wall and stopped directly in front of her, once again completely ignoring the concept of personal space. “If you want, though, you can walk me out.”

“I think you know the way out just fine.”

Root’s little smile was mocking and, before Shaw could stop her, she leaned down to brush her lips across Shaw’s cheek. “I’ll see you around, Shaw.”

Shaw didn’t move until she heard the door below close behind Root. She hurried down the stairs, out the door, and over to the side of the island near where she’d found the seal skin just in time to see a large grey seal on the rocks below. The seal looked up at her for a moment and then dove into the water, disappearing below the surface with barely a splash. Shaw stood on the cliff staring dumbly at the place the seal had vanished.

“Well, fuck me,” she muttered under her breath. Maybe Root had been telling the truth after all.

Another, darker thought occurred to her. If shapeshifting seal women were possible, then what else might be possible below the dark waves of the ocean? Just what was it that had almost capsized her boat earlier? And what, if anything, did all this have to do with the corpses that kept washing up on her island?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Full credit for suggesting Root be a selkie goes to [canadianwheatpirates](https://archiveofourown.org/users/canadianwheatpirates/pseuds/canadianwheatpirates), who was also the miscreant who reblogged the lighthouse post that set this off. Basically this is all his fault.
> 
> Shaw's lighthouse is very antiquated because it uses an oil lamp and clockwork. More modern lighthouses use electricity. The time period here is purposefully vague, but the Aesthetic of lamps and clockwork was too good to pass up. Additionally, the clockwork that would run lighthouses was usually a small compartment under the lantern and not huge gears set into the floor, but once again, it just seemed Cool. While my lighthouse knowledge is still woefully inadeuqate I did learn a ton of random information that I will never need to use in my entire life but is still fascinating to me and being able to randomly bring up abandoned soviet atomic lighthouses in casual conversation is its own reward.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the E-rated content is in this chapter and, as i do with all my stuff, i sectioned it off with 3 horizontal lines in case you wanna skip it.

In her five years as a lighthouse keeper, Shaw had never once missed having someone else to talk to, but now, with all these mysteries swirling around her, she thought about writing a letter to her old army buddy, John. He'd been a quiet fellow and had respected her need for space and privacy and over time she'd come to see him almost as a brother, but she could only imagine the teasing she'd get if she wrote to him about her current circumstances. 'Dear John, how are you? A shapeshifting seal woman has been stalking me for five years and she may be mixed up in some murder spree now. Also I think I saw a sea monster the other day.'

She'd never live that down.

Instead, she decided to go to the local library. On her next day in town, she rushed through her shopping so she could spend some time hunting for information. It took her significantly longer than she'd hoped without the help of a librarian (she'd decided against mentioning the seal thing to anyone in any way), but after an hour or two she managed to find a small, faded book of folktales with a story in it that made the hair on the back of her neck stand up.

The book was safely tucked in with her purchases when she rowed back to the island later.

Whatever the thing was that had caused her boat to almost flip before hadn't come back in the week since Root's visit. Root hadn't come back either (though Shaw sometimes thought she could feel something watching her from out in the ocean) and, as much as Shaw hated to admit it, she was a little disappointed. She'd come here to escape from the world and all its complications, but with only the slightest taste of excitement she found herself poised for more.

Which was probably why she decided to look further into the murders despite Root's warning. There wasn't much she could do in the short amount of time she spent on the mainland, but she asked around town to see if she could even find a starting point. Her questions were met with nervous stares and pointed dismissal. Finally she got the man who'd covered her position in the summer to agree to take a single night shift in the lighthouse while she went to the next town over. (She hoped that Root wouldn't choose that night to visit and then was annoyed with herself for the thought).

While no one in the next town had seen anyone like the sketches she'd drawn of the victims, there were several people who spoke of disappearances that had started over the summer. She procured photos of the missing people and promised to report anything she found to their families.

When she got back to her island the next morning, her substitute was waiting for her in the boat house.

"Big storm coming in tomorrow night," he said. "They say it might be the biggest we've gotten in years. Wouldn't want to be out here for that."

"I'll manage," Shaw said. The lighthouse island had withstood violent storms over the years, but there was always a risk involved.

She wondered what Root did during storms. Was it calmer beneath the waves or did she find some dry place on land to wait it out?

There wasn't much time to worry about Root, though, not with the necessary preparations for the storm that had to be done. The most time consuming bit was wrestling her boat ashore and hauling it up to the lighthouse. She'd driven metal hooks securely into the side of the lighthouse before the last big storm and used a pulley system to haul the boat up high, hopefully out of reach of the waves.

Everything on the ground floor of the lighthouse was taken up a floor to the supply room, and the most valuable supplies she brought up to the kitchen. There was little worry that a storm, even a bad one, would get water up to the second floor, but surviving as a lighthouse keeper meant being prepared for anything.

She put sandbags down around the ground level and checked the sealing on the windows. Last, she did a thorough examination of the huge glass windows of the light room, searching for any cracks that could cause them to shatter in the storm.

The rest of her preparations involved another trip to town the next day to stock up on extra supplies. The storm was only supposed to last a night, but there was talk of rain and smaller storms for the days after which would make traveling to shore hazardous.

When she returned to her island, weighted down with supplies, she found she had company. Root was lying in the grass next to the door to the lighthouse, her thick seal skin pulled over her like a blanket.

At first Shaw wondered why Root hadn't just let herself in and slept in the bed (of course Shaw would have been annoyed by that, but somehow having Root sleeping naked on the ground outside annoyed her more), but then she saw the blood.

She dropped her supplies to the ground and knelt besides Root to examine the deep wound near her shoulder that was still oozing blood. A stab wound, most likely, from a fairly large knife (and she couldn't help but wonder if it was the same knife that had been used to slit several throats recently).

"Root, wake up," she said, shaking her gently.

Root's eyelids fluttered open and she looked around. Her eyes fixed on Shaw and a soft smile crept across her face. "Shaw. You're back."

"Yeah, and you're bleeding all over my doorstep. What the hell happened?" She shook her head. "Actually that can wait. We should do something about your shoulder first. Can you get up?"

"I think so."

Shaw stepped back to let her get up and gathered up all the supplies she'd dropped. She unlocked the door and tossed them inside before turning back to help Root.

"Can you hold this a second?" Root asked, indicating the heavy seal skin.

"Uh, yeah." Shaw felt a little odd taking the skin after everything she now knew, but she gathered it into her arms anyway.

Root smiled as if she knew the source of her discomfort. "It's okay, Shaw." She carefully got to her feet, clutching her injured arm tight to her body. "Let's go."

Shaw was very glad Root wasn't too hurt to walk since she didn't think it would have been possible to carry someone up the narrow, winding stairs. As it was it was awkward enough walking up the stairs behind a naked Root, and Shaw was careful to keep her eyes fixed on the stairs themselves. When they reached her bedroom, Shaw folded the seal skin on her bed before she dug around in her chest for her medical supplies. Root sat at the table, a blanket wrapped around her waist.

"I thought it might be less distracting for you this way," she said and then smirked when Shaw's eyes narrowed.

"How long ago did this happen?" Shaw asked as she examined the wound. It almost looked like it had begun mending in some places.

"Last night. My kind heals quickly, but transforming seems to have reopened it. I had quite a time swimming here with it bleeding all over."

"I'm surprised you didn't run into any sharks."

"I can handle sharks," Root said a little haughtily.

Shaw held back a smile. "Okay, tough guy, now hold still."

She applied pressure to the wound until the bleeding eased up enough for her to stitch it shut. She only had basic painkillers, but Root sat quietly through the stitches, only the slight tension in her posture giving away that she felt any pain. Once Shaw finished the stitches she bandaged the wound as best she could with her supplies.

"If I'd known you'd gotten stabbed I would have picked up more medical supplies when I was in town."

"Next time I'll try to give you advanced warning."

Shaw tied off the last of the bandaging. "Next time try not to get stabbed."

"I'll keep that in mind."

Root looked up at her, too intently for Shaw's liking, and Shaw felt her mouth go dry. Root had made her interest very clear last time, and Shaw would have been lying if she'd said she wasn't interested, but….

But Root represented complications that Shaw had never wanted in her life, the sort of complications she'd thought herself safe from out on her island.

Root must have read something in her expression, because she gave a wry little smile. "This doesn't have to be complicated, Shaw. It can be quite simple if you're willing." She tilted her head back, the invitation clear.

Shaw stepped back. "Want to tell me how you got hurt?"

There was only the briefest flicker of disappointment on Root's face. "I had...a disagreement with someone. I was careless and they stabbed me."

"What was the disagreement over?"

Root shook her head. "Sorry, Shaw, that's my business." She pulled her blanket up higher so it was draped over her shoulders. "Are the clothes I had before still here by any chance?"

"Yeah, hang on." She'd found Root's clothing folded neatly on the table on the ground floor last time she'd left. It had crossed her mind to get rid of them--keeping clothes for someone else felt odd--but instead she'd had them washed and stored them in her clothes chest. She fished them out and presented them to Root, ignoring the pleased little smile Root got when she realized where Shaw had kept them.

Shaw didn't turn around this time when Root got dressed, though she tried to be at least a little discreet as she watched, fussing with putting her medical supplies away. Root's knowing smile said that her attempt had failed miserably. Shaw rolled her eyes and turned away.

"Any chance that stab wound on your shoulder would match up with the knife that was used to slit the throats of the corpses that keep showing up here?" she asked, unwilling to let the topic go completely.

"I don't think so, but I suppose it's possible," Root allowed. "Does that matter?"

Shaw turned back around in time to see Root flip her hair out of the collar of her sweater and then smooth her skirt into place.

"Did you go after the murderer? I got the impression you didn't much care for humans, so why bother?"

Root pursed her lips. "Most humans."

"There's some you find acceptable?" Shaw asked, curious despite herself.

"One, anyway."

Shaw ignored the slight pleased feeling that answer gave her in favor of the more important implication. "Does that mean that I have something to do with this? Did the murderer get mad that I was poking around?"

Root sighed. "I _did_ tell you not to get involved."

"Well, I can take care of myself. And I didn't ask you to get involved on my behalf." The fact that Root had gotten herself hurt on Shaw's account was infuriating.

"No, you didn't," Root agreed. She sat down on the edge of her bed and ran a hand over her seal skin. "That was my decision."

Shaw watched her for a long second, trying to find the right words. "Did you kill whoever it was?" she asked finally.

Root's hand tightened against the pelt. "No, they got away." She looked up finally. "There's a storm coming tonight. You should finish getting ready for it."

"Right." Shaw looked out the window at the grey skies. The window panes were already rattling in the rising winds and she could hear the waves crashing below on the cliffs. "Do you, uh, where do you go when there's a storm?"

"Usually I find somewhere safe to wait it out. A cave often."

"But you can't swim as well with you arm hurt, right?" She wondered how the injury carried over between forms, but she wasn't sure she wanted to know. The whole thing was still too weird.

"Are you worried about me?" Root's voice was somewhere between amusement and disbelief. "I can take care of myself, too, Shaw."

Shaw made a disgusted noise. "Just stay here for the storm, okay?"

Root’s face lit up and Shaw hurried to interrupt her before she could say anything. “I need to check on the lantern oil. You should get some rest.” She fled up the stairs before Root had a chance to respond.

* * *

The storm started in earnest an hour before sunset, thunder rattling the windows and lightning splitting the sky. Shaw sat sprawled out in her armchair in the light room looking out over the ocean. During storms she had to be extra vigilant to watch for ships in distress, though in her experience there were far less ships attempting to sail in weather like this. Below the waves were crashing higher than she’d seen them come in years. She’d never had the ground floor flood before, but she thought there was a decent chance it might tonight.

Root had taken Shaw’s advice and was currently curled up asleep in Shaw’s bed. Shaw was trying not to look down at her too often, though her resolve cracked when Root whimpered in her sleep.

A nightmare, Shaw figured, uncertain if she should go down and wake her. Would Root have seal nightmares or human nightmares? Or both? Did she dream about sharks and fishing nets maybe? Or murderers with knives?

Thunder rattled the windows again and the whole lighthouse shook with the vibration. Root sat up in bed with a start, staring around herself in confusion.

“Root,” Shaw called down. “Up here.”

Root didn’t respond, but she did climb out of bed and vanish from sight through the gaps in the floor. Shaw heard footsteps on the stairs and then Root appeared, fully dressed, but with a blanket from the bed wrapped around her as well. It had gotten cold in the tower without Shaw noticing and she cursed herself for not thinking of that and lighting the little stove in the bedroom she used for heat in the winter.

“Sleep well?” she asked.

Lightning struck again, illuminating the sky. Root walked past her to stare out the window at the driving rain.

“Better than I’ve slept in a while.” Root placed one hand on the glass of the window. “The ocean is restless tonight.”

“Well, there _is _a huge storm.”

Root shook her head. “Not what I meant. The ocean is...it’s waking up.”

“Waking up? What do you mean?”

Root pushed off the window and came over towards her. “It’s not important. Forget I said anything.”

Shaw was rapidly reaching the end of her patience with the cryptic half-answers. Just what the hell was Root mixed up in? “You know, I could help if you told me what was going on.”

Root sat down on the arm of Shaw’s chair, her legs bumping against Shaw’s. “It’s sweet of you to offer, but this is bigger than either of us.”

“What is? Some murders? The ocean being odd? Just tell me what the hell is going on.”

Instead of answering, Root rested one arm on the back of Shaw’s chair and leaned down so their faces were inches apart. Shaw’s hands tightened in her lap as she waited for Root to lean in that last inch, but Root stayed still, watching her patiently. Root was waiting for her to make the next move, she realized. So she did.

She grabbed the front of Root’s thick sweater and pulled her down the last inch to press their lips together. Root tasted like the salt of the ocean and her fingers gripped Shaw’s arms tightly. Shaw pulled her down off the arm of the chair so she was sitting sideways in Shaw’s lap and deepened the kiss. It was absurd, she thought with the small part of her mind not focused on how soft Root’s lips were or how good it felt to have Root’s fingers biting into the muscles of her arms. Absurd that she was sitting here in a lighthouse on the ocean in the middle of a storm kissing a woman who was also a seal sometimes.

The windows rattled from more thunder and they both pulled back to stare at each other.

“I, uh, I need to keep a lookout for ships,” Shaw said finally without much conviction.

“I think we can make something work.” Root eased herself up off of Shaw’s lap and offered her a hand.

Shaw got to her feet unaided and reached for the bottom of Root's sweater. She knew that Root wasn't wearing anything under it and yet it still made her breath catch as she pulled it up over Root's head. "What'd you have in mind?" She asked as her eyes roamed over Root's skin. Sure she'd seen her naked several times now, but this was different.

"Well, we do have a room with a view," Root said and pulled her after her as she went over to the windows. Root put her back up against one of the windows and tugged on Shaw's hand. "Something tells me that you're excellent at multitasking."

* * *

* * *

* * *

Shaw hesitated, looking out the rain-streaked windows at the dark ocean. A rustle of cloth drew her attention back and she watched as Root's skirt slid down over her hips and fell to the floor. The only thing Root was still wearing was the bandage on her arm and she'd given no indication that the wound was bothering her.

"Multitasking, right," Shaw said as she stepped forwards. She pulled her own shirt off over her head and watched as Root's lips parted and her eyes widened at the sight. "I think I can handle that."

Root gasped into Shaw's mouth as Shaw kissed her hard and pressed her bare back up against the cold glass. One of Shaw's hands moved from Root's hip, across her stomach and ribs, and further up. She brushed her thumb across Root's nipple and felt her shiver in reaction.

Her other hand was inching its way downwards when Root pulled back from the kiss and leaned in to explore Shaw's neck, teeth nipping sharply as she went. Shaw's fingers pinched Root's nipple, pulling a noise almost like a growl out of her. She had only a second to be pleased with the result before Root's teeth sank into her neck, biting hard and making her moan into Root's ear. Behind Root she could see the rain hammering at the windows, and the lighthouse beam sweeping over the water. For a split second she thought she saw something moving out in the darkness like she'd seen the other night.

"Root," she said, pulling back just a little. "I think there's something out there."

"It's not important," Root murmured into the side of her neck.

"What is--" Shaw lost track of what she'd been about to say when Root grabbed her wrist and pulled her wandering hand to its destination. All other thoughts were driven from Shaw's mind when her fingers met slick heat. It had been a long time since she'd taken a partner, and she'd almost forgotten the unique pleasure she took in mapping out a partner's body, finding all the little spots and sensations that made them melt. Like when she rubbed with her fingers _just there_, Root's breath stuttered out and her hips pressed forwards into Shaw. It felt so good, so powerful to pull a seemingly endless variety of reactions out of Root.

Root's fingers yanked painfully at Shaw's hair when Shaw's fingers slipped inside her. She stared down at Shaw with a look lost between lust and wonder and then wrapped her leg around her to pull her in tighter. Behind Shaw, the clockwork gears of the lighthouse clicked and whirred as they spun, but she had no ear for any sound that wasn't Root's breathy gasps and moans as she moved her fingers faster inside of her. Lightning split the sky as Root's muscles fluttered and tightened around her fingers, and Shaw's whole body tingled with anticipation at the long drawn-out moan that fell from Root's lips. That was a sound she planned to hear again quite soon if she had her way.

She only gave Root a minute to recover before she spun her around and pressed her up against the glass again. No sense in making Root miss out on the storm. She curved herself up against Root's back and reached around to smooth a hand over her stomach.

"Again?" she asked Root in a low rumble in her ear.

"God, yes," Root gasped, her breath fogging the glass in front of her.

Shaw took it slower this time, enjoying all the sensations to their fullest: Root's back pressed against her bare chest, how hot and wet Root was around her fingers, Root's breasts soft beneath her fingers, Root's breath fogging the window more and more with each panting gasp, Root's fingers scrambling for purchase on the cold glass as the storm raged just inches away. Thunder rumbled again and the window vibrated, the sensation moving through Shaw's arms where they touched the pane.

"Sameen."

Shaw felt her own body react to the needy whimper that tore out of Root. She wanted to speed up and drive Root over the edge, but instead she slowed down to really savor the moment. Root's eyes were shut, her head turned to the side and pressed against the rain-streaked glass. Her breath was coming out in short desperate whimpers and her face was flushed red. She was the most damned beautiful thing Shaw had seen in her life and she wanted to freeze the moment, capture it somehow so she could come back to it later and appreciate it all over again.

Root's hips were moving desperately against her hand and her fingers were clawing at the glass. Shaw took pity on her and started thrusting into her in earnest, and grinding the palm of her hand against her. She felt Root's body start to tense and shake as her orgasm approached and she applied a little pressure in just the right place to push Root over the edge.

She didn't move back until she was sure Root was recovered enough to stand on her own, and when she finally did she felt a sliver of regret at the loss of contact. Root turned around and leaned back on the window to look down at her. "That was nice."

Shaw ran her eyes over her again, took in Root's flushed face and chest, the red scratches on her breasts and sides, and the smear of wetness on her thighs. "To say the least."

"You look pleased with yourself," Root said with a smile. "With good reason, I mean." Her fingers traced a trail along one of the scratches Shaw had left across her stomach and Shaw stared, entranced.

"My turn," Root said and before Shaw realized what was happening she'd been pushed back down into her chair and Root knelt before her to unbuckle her belt. Shaw lifted her hips to help Root slide her pants and underwear down and off. She scooted forwards to the edge of the chair, suddenly very aware of what Root was up to and eager to move things along.

Root's hands were firm against Shaw's thighs when she pushed her legs apart and moved between them. She sucked hard at the soft skin on the inside of one of Shaw's thighs and then the other and Shaw tangled her fingers in Root's hair and wondered at the way the soft, shiny locks felt between her fingers.

The first touch of Root's tongue made Shaw's fingers tighten and pull at her hair. She'd had some passing thought earlier that maybe Root had never been with a human this way before, but she was now quite sure that she'd been entirely wrong about that since Root seemed to know exactly what to do with her tongue to drive Shaw crazy. Root hummed deep in her throat and the sound reverberated up through Shaw's body and made her throw her head back with a moan.

She dropped one hand to the chair behind her to take her weight so she could thrust her hips forwards and grind herself against Root's face. Root's mouth was hot and insistent against her, her tongue licking and thrusting. Shaw stared out the window at the storm and then down at Root's head between her legs. This was definitely the best night she'd ever had on the job.

She didn't last long after Root's fingers slid into her and was soon pressing herself desperately against Root's mouth as her whole body tensed and then slumping back into the chair. Root peered up at her from where she knelt, evident satisfaction on her face.

* * *

* * *

* * *

"Again?" she asked, stealing Shaw's earlier question with a smug little grin.

"Yeah, uh, just give me a second," Shaw panted.

"Anything for you," Root purred. She got partway up, flopped over into Shaw's lap, and wrapped her arms around Shaw's neck. Shaw got her breath back enough to claim Root's mouth and groaned in pleasure at the taste of herself on Root's lips.

"You know, half the ships on the ocean could have sailed right into the rocks and I wouldn't have noticed," Shaw said when the kiss broke off.

"I'll take that as a compliment," Root said. Her legs were crossed and draped over one arm of the chair and she kicked her feet up as she scooted around to get comfortable.

Shaw was about to tell her she didn't do this part, the part after sex with all the touching and feelings, but Root had already butted her head against Shaw's neck and pressed her nose up under her jaw. She settled in with a contented sigh and Shaw found she didn't have the will to move her. She readjusted slightly so she could see out the windows better and then relaxed into the chair, resigned to her predicament for the moment.

* * *

Shaw fell asleep in the late hours of the morning after she and Root had thoroughly worn each other out. She'd thought about sleeping in her chair and letting Root take the bed, but in the end she'd been too tired to want to move and had fallen asleep with Root sprawled across her.

She'd thought, while on the verge of sleep, that Root would have vanished again when she woke, slipped back into the sea like she had before, but, when she opened her eyes, she found that Root was still very much there and curled up in the curve of her body. One of Root's arms was flung over Shaw's hip, and her head was nestled below Shaw's chin. A beam of sunlight from the window illuminated the bed and made Root's hair shine.

Shaw felt good, more rested than she had in ages and sore in the best way possible. She knew she had no time to waste today, that the storm could have done damage she'd need to see to and had undoubtedly tossed up all sorts of debris onto the island. There was no time to lie around in bed and watch Root sleep (_not_ that that's what she'd been doing).

She gently slid out of Root's grasp, climbed out from under the covers, and tucked Root back in. The way Root was asleep, Shaw wondered if she'd ever slept soundly before in her life. She looked like she could sleep through the lighthouse collapsing, but Shaw still tried to be quiet as she dressed and went downstairs.

The lighthouse had come through the storm intact and undamaged, but, as she'd predicted, the island was covered with all sorts of debris that had been thrown there by the waves. There was even a small tree, its roots lodged in the sand, that she might need equipment to cut up and remove. And yet somehow the decrepit boathouse had once again survived against all odds.

Shaw picked her way along the shoreline, taking stock of all the new treasures she'd inherited, and came to a dead halt when she reached the far end of the island.

The third corpse had been dead longer than the previous two had been when they'd washed up. Shaw made a guess that this fellow had been dead at least a week. Another change was that he hadn't had his throat slit, but instead it looked like someone had ripped his throat out with their fingers. And then there was the police uniform he wore. This whole thing spelled trouble and Shaw had a sinking feeling she knew who was behind this murder.

"Sameen?"

She turned to find Root had joined her outside, her grey skirt whipping in the wind.

"This your doing?" Shaw asked.

Root came over and stared at the body with evident distaste. "Well, he wasn't all gross and purple when I dumped him in the water, but the throat part, yes." She smiled at Shaw, her teeth bared bright.

Shaw hadn't actually expected her to admit it and the toothy grin was a little disconcerting. "Uh, okay, so why did you kill him?" And just how strong was Root that she could inflict such an injury?

Root shrugged. "He was sent to kill you, so I killed him first."

"He was…." Shaw looked down at the dead police officer again. She didn't recognize him, but that wasn't too surprising. "Why would the police want to kill me?"

"I did tell you not to get involved."

Shaw cursed as she put the pieces together. "If the police are involved in all this then are they behind the murders, too?"

"Not only them, but they've definitely helped cover it up." Root stepped away from the corpse and started walking back towards the house. Shaw gave the corpse one last look before she followed her.

"Did you know that they'd tried to poison you twice now?" Root asked. "I've had to steal your dinner a few times."

"The supplies they send over. Fusco?" She'd never have thought the sarcastic officer would try to kill her. Perhaps she'd been away from the world too long and let herself get complacent.

"Actually, somehow your friend Lionel may be one of the only officers not involved. As far as I can tell he's completely ignorant."

Well, that was something anyway. "Why are they killing people?" Shaw asked, but Root's helpful mood seemed to have past.

"You should leave here," Root said. "Find a job at another lighthouse. There's one further up the coast that might suit. The keeper is an old man and there's no telling when he might slip on a rock and crack his skull." She met Shaw's look with righteous indignation. "What? He throws his trash in the ocean. Wouldn't you kill someone for throwing their refuse in your home?"

"You're not killing him and I'm not leaving, so just tell me what's going on."

Root only shook her head. "A few weeks ago you wouldn't even believe what I was. This would be beyond you yet."

"You mean it's something like you? Something, uh…."

"Magical?" Root suggested.

Shaw made a face.

Root chuckled. "Yes, something like that."

They'd reached the front door of the lighthouse and Shaw hesitated. She had a lot of work in wait for her today, but some selfish part of her wanted to take Root to bed again first.

"Well, I must be going for now," Root announced.

"Oh."

Root reached out to brush a lock of hair back behind Shaw's ear. "Don't look so disappointed, sweetie, I promise I'll come back soon. And in the meantime, try to stay out of trouble."

"You know I'm not going to stop looking into this, right?" she asked. "It's my decision to make," she added quickly when she saw Root's frown. "And I'm telling you that you shouldn't try to protect me like that again. I never asked you to."

Root's smile was tight and humorless. "And that's _my_ decision to make, I'm afraid."

Shaw said nothing more as she followed her back up to the bedroom where Root retrieved her seal skin.

"I think I owe you an apology for that," Shaw said hesitantly. "For when I took it the first time, I mean. I didn't realize what it was or what it meant."

Root watched her, head tilted to one side. "Someone did their research, I see."

Shaw shrugged, uncomfortable with Root's intent stare. "I read about the legends of people like you, seal people. Selkies some stories called them. A lot of the stories talked about how men would steal the skins of the selkies while they were in human form and hide them away. Then they'd force the selkie women to marry them and make sure they never found their skin again so they couldn't run away to the ocean. I didn't...that wasn't what I was trying to do."

Root's smile was one of the soft ones that Shaw was coming to look forwards to despite herself. "Sameen, it never even occurred to me that was why you'd taken it, and you made no effort to hide it from me. No apology needed." She gathered the skin in her arms. "And don't worry about the dead fellow out there. I'll tow him somewhere where he'll never be found."

Shaw remained still when Root paused to brush a kiss across her cheek the way she had before. Root just smiled at her a little distantly and took her leave. Shaw waited until she heard the door shut below before she finally started getting ready for the night's work ahead of her.

* * *

Root didn't return that night or the next morning when Shaw went to bed for the day. Shaw tried to tell herself that she wasn't worried, but the lie sounded hollow even to her.

She settled down into her bed, trying to ignore how empty it felt today, how cold. Maybe she should get a dog.

It took longer than usual to fall asleep and when she did her dreams were dark and unsettling. The lighthouse stood alone on an ink black ocean, the waves lashing it from all sides. Tendrils of shadows crept up the sides of it, encircling the structure and ripping it apart. Shaw fell from the top, hurtling down towards a vast maw of tentacles and teeth.

She awoke instantly and sat up in bed, breathing hard. It had just been a dream, and yet it felt so familiar to her, like she had seen that dark monster below the waters before. But surely she would have remembered seeing a monster like that.

She climbed to the light room to stare out at the ocean, but the ocean remained calm and grey, stretching out to the horizon.

Fusco was waiting to greet her when she made it to the bottom of the lighthouse.

"There you are. I was starting to think you washed away in the storm." He handed her a basket of neatly-wrapped supplies. "You know they were taking bets at the pub about whether this place would survive. I told them this building had been standing for generations before them and would be here after they were rotting in the ground."

Shaw looked down at the basket, remembering what Root had told her about the supplies. "Has there been any word about those murders, Fusco?"

"Nah, everyone's been real close-lipped about the whole thing. If I didn't know better I'd say there was some huge conspiracy going on." He laughed. "Good thing this place is too boring for anything like that."

"Yeah, good thing," Shaw said. "Have you...when you row out here to bring me stuff, have you ever seen anything odd? In the water, I mean?"

Fusco tugged at his gloves and stared off past her towards the ocean. "Ocean is full of all kinds of weird stuff. I try not to look into it unless I have to."

"Right, of course." She could hear the evasion in his voice, but she let it go. If he thought about it too much he might stop bringing her supplies and whoever they replaced him with might be one of the officers intent on her death.

"Plenty of weird stuff on the land, in my opinion," Fusco continued. "Like whatever the hell happened on the beach."

"What happened on the beach?"

Fusco frowned in confusion and then realization dawned on his face. "I keep forgetting you never hear any of the gossip out here, but it's all that anyone's been talking about the last few days. The other day, very early in the morning, some old coot goes out to go fishing and what does he find on the beach but blood. Quite a lot of it, too. Now it theoretically could have been an animal fight of some kind I guess, but we never found any carcasses that fit the bill and the blood spray on the sand was a bit off for that type of thing."

"You think it was another murder?" Shaw asked, thinking back to the man with his neck ripped out who she'd found on her island.

"Only if the murderer was a mermaid," Fusco said and then laughed. "Blood trail led right into the ocean. Weirdest thing I've ever seen."

"That sure sounds strange. Now, where exactly is this beach?"

* * *

She couldn't go to the beach until the next day during the time she should have been sleeping. She wasn't sure what she'd hoped to find, but there were no clues on the dark, rocky sands of the beach. There were places the sand looked like it had been disrupted by human hands, churned up and turned over, but there were no bloodstains or dead bodies.

She walked along the water's edge for a while, staring out at the rolling waves. Was Root out there now staring back at her? She should have asked Root for a way to contact her before she'd left last time, though to what end she was unsure.

When she returned to the road that led back to town, she found that Root had been watching her after all, though not from the water.

"Are you following me?" Shaw asked as she climbed up the sandbank to the road. Root was dressed in another sweater today, but she'd traded out the skirt for pants and boots. She carried a large bag over one shoulder that Shaw guessed must hold her seal skin.

"Can't blame a girl for worrying."

"Don't think I'm in much danger on an empty beach."

Root's lips pressed together in a thin line. "You'd be surprised."

"I've got a knife and years of military training. Anyone that comes after me will have a fight on their hands."

"Any _human_, you mean."

Shaw sighed. Back to the cryptic riddles again already. "Don't suppose you'll answer if I ask you what's going on again?"

"Afraid not."

Shaw nodded and headed down the road back to town, careful to keep her pace slow enough for Root to catch up.

"Was I the only reason you were at that beach just now?" Shaw asked when Root fell into step beside her.

"What other reason would I have to be there?"

"Returning to the scene of the crime, maybe."

"Ah." Root smiled at her. "As frustrating as your persistence is, it's also very endearing."

Shaw glared. "I'm not endearing. I'm tired and cranky and I want answers."

"You know, there _was_ another reason I was at the beach just now."

Shaw squinted suspiciously at her. "And what was that?"

"I was hoping you might give me a ride back to your island."

"My island? What for?"

Root arched an eyebrow at her.

"Oh, right." She thought about refusing Root in retaliation for the secrets, but decided it wasn't worth missing out for. "Guess I could give you a lift then."

"I'd like that a lot."

Shaw noted the melancholy in her voice, but was unsure of the cause. Root would cheer up once they were in bed, she decided.

They barely made it back to Shaw's lighthouse bedroom before shedding their clothing and falling into each other again. It was more intense this time, rougher and with an edge of rawness they both felt but left unspoken. When Shaw looked down at Root, sweaty and flushed on the bed beneath her, she couldn't help but wonder what the urgency they both felt was from, and if somehow this would be the last time they were together like this.

Root fell asleep next to her again, but when Shaw awoke in the evening her bed was empty.

* * *

Shaw wasn't surprised when Root didn't return that night or the next day. Even beyond the nagging feeling that Root had been saying goodbye, she wouldn't have expected her back so soon. But it still bothered her.

She spent the early evening as she usually did: trimming the wicks, filling the lamp with oil, cranking up the weights, and polishing the lens. It was good, familiar work and she fell into it gratefully.

The air felt different that night, like it was charged with electricity, and, even though there were no storms forecast, Shaw thought she saw dark clouds on the horizon before the sun went down. Freak storms weren't unheard of, but this felt different, more ominous.

She squinted through the light room windows down towards the beach she'd visited, but it was mostly hidden from sight behind a hill and too far away to see much. And what would she have done if she'd seen Root down there anyway? Abandoned her post to run after her?

Shaw's restlessness grew as night fell, as did her certainty that there was something especially off this night. She moved her chair around to the other side of the room so she could watch the dark patch of night in the direction of the beach. For hours she saw nothing at all, but then, a faint light, so dim she almost thought she'd imagined it.

Someone was on that beach tonight.

She cranked the weights up to the top and refilled the oil again before she left the lighthouse and headed to her boat. To leave her lighthouse and the island at night was close to the worst offense she could commit on her job, and yet she felt she had no choice. Something terrible was going to happen on that beach tonight and there was no doubt in her mind that Root would be there.

Rowing to shore in the dark was extra treacherous as she couldn't see the rocks sticking up out of the water as easily. She relied heavily on her memory from making the crossing every other week for five years and made it ashore with only a few bumps and scratches to the boat. The ocean had been weirdly calm, almost as if it were waiting for something.

The walk to the beach was dark and cold as Shaw had no lantern and the temperature had dropped much lower than she'd expected. It was as if with every step she took the air became colder. She was shivering by the time she reached the top of the beach, but what she saw before her drove all thoughts of the cold from her mind. She crouched behind a sand bar to observe.

There were many figures on the beach tonight, milling around out in the darkness. Some of them carried torches that lit up the area in small circles of light on the sand. All the figures were wearing dark robes with hoods pulled up, all but three. Three men she didn't recognize were kneeling in the center of the group, their hands bound behind them and blindfolds over their eyes. One of them tried to rise once as Shaw watched and his legs were swiftly kicked out from under him by one of the watching figures.

The rest of the figures seemed intent on some project that involved drawing patterns in the sand, though Shaw had trouble seeing what the final shape of the vast complex drawing was supposed to be. Several other figures were hurrying around laying down all manner of things on various parts of the drawing: candles, driftwood, what Shaw thought might have been part of a sheep carcass, and other items she was too far away to recognize.

She looked back at the kneeling men, beginning to get an idea of what was going on here. Just what was it that these people hoped to summon from beneath the dark waves? Surely they knew such things were only stories?

Though until these last few weeks, Shaw would have thought Root's true nature was a story as well. And where was Root anyway? Shaw hadn't seen any sign of the woman or the seal near the beach.

The figures stopped their drawing and moved into a huddle at the center of it. Shaw could see it a little clearer now that it was done, some vast sigil carved out into the beach sand and the sacrifices (for she was sure now that was what the kneeling men were) placed in the middle. Most of the figures moved clear off the sigil, leaving only two figures and the kneeling men in the center. One figure held a torch in one hand and a large tome in the other. As Shaw watched, they began to read from the tome, their voice echoing out across the beach in a language Shaw had never heard before.

The second figure in the sigil stepped behind the three kneeling men and pulled something from their robe that caught the light of the torch and gleamed in the darkness. It looked to Shaw like a small silver bowl. She had a feeling she knew where this was going.

Sure enough, the figure stepped up directly behind one of the kneeling men and there was another glint of metal in the torch light as it drew a knife across his throat in one smooth motion. Blood spilled out and the figure used the bowl to catch it. Once the man stopped bleeding, the figure let his body slump to the ground and then started to walk the lines of the sigil, pouring blood on the sand outline. There was no way there was enough blood in the bowl for the whole sigil and Shaw eyed the remaining two men and wondered if she wanted to get involved. There were way too many people down there for her to fight armed only with her knife. Perhaps it would be better just to watch and see what they were trying to accomplish with the whole human sacrifice act.

Still, it didn't sit right with her to watch the other men be murdered while they were helpless and she started inching down the sand bar to the beach below, careful to stay in the darkest patches. Maybe she could find something to cause a distraction with.

She was too far away to help the second man in time when the figure returned for him, and the figure was nearly finished pouring out the blood when she crept into the shadows directly outside the circle of the torchlight. She searched the dark beach for something to throw--a large rock perhaps. If she could incapacitate one of them from a distance and injure the other quickly maybe she could release the last man before the mob of figures reached them.

She was reaching for a nearby rock when a flash of movement caught her eye. A new figure streaked out of the darkness from further down the beach and crashed into the figure with the tome, sending them sprawling. Shaw had only a second to register the long brown hair of the new arrival before they whirled around and leaped at the figure with the knife.

"Dammit, Root," Shaw muttered under her breath. She had no choice now. Both figures seemed intent on Root, so she ran into the sigil to the last kneeling man, sliced the binding on his wrists, and pulled his blindfold off.

"Go," she ordered him. His eyes were wide with terror and he stumbled as he got to his feet and ran away out into the darkness.

Shaw turned just in time to greet the man who'd had the knife as he rushed at her. Shaw shifted aside as he ran at her, grabbed his arm, and sent him sprawling to the ground. When he rose again, she caught his arm, twisted it sharply and pulled the knife from his grasp. He snarled at her and she noticed in passing that he seemed familiar, but she was more focused in brushing off his clawing hands and letting her knife sink home into his chest.

He fell to the ground, hood pulled back, and she finally recognized the chief of police. Not surprising, in retrospect, and, if she'd actually been one to feel regret, any trace of it would have vanished.

She turned to see Root rip out the throat of the second figure, her fingers covered in blood. The dead man lying at her feet was also familiar to Shaw--the mayor of the town. 

She looked back up at Root and their eyes met in the dim light of the torch that was guttering on the ground.

"You need to get out of here," Root said, far too calmly for their current circumstances in Shaw's opinion.

Shaw ignored her and turned to face the other figures who...had halted on the edge of the sigil. That explained why they hadn't rushed her yet though it was a bit concerning.

"Maybe we should both get out of here," she said backing away towards the shadows. "Root? Let's go."

"They didn't finish the ritual so it shouldn't be dan--"

A deep rumbling interrupted Root and the ground shook beneath their feet so violently that they both fell over into the sand.

Shaw started to pick herself up. "What the hell was--" She froze, staring out at the ocean.

There was something massive out in the darkness, rising from the ocean floor and bursting through the waves. Ocean water splashed everywhere and a huge wave broke over Shaw leaving her drenched and shivering on the wet sand. Around her the sigil appeared to be unharmed by the water, not a single line out of place. The shape in the darkness grew larger as it rose higher and higher out of the water, towering over the beach. It was more massive than Shaw could comprehend, far too big for her to imagine a living creature of that size.

Someone tugged on her arm and she tore her eyes away from the looming darkness long enough to find Root on her feet trying to urge her up.

"We need to stop it," Root whispered.

"Stop it? How? Shouldn't we get out of here?"

"Too late for that, but with the ritual unfinished we have a chance."

The shape grew even more vast as it approached and then massive arms reached out of the darkness and slammed into the sand on either side of the sigil. There were screams, quickly cut off, from the hooded figures outside the sigil as one of the giant arms crashed down and crushed them into the beach. Ironic that the sigil they'd been afraid to enter had been the only safe place to be, thought Shaw. She turned back to look at the creature in the light of the torch, and then….

And then….

All sound dropped away in the world, no crash of waves on the beach, no wind blowing through the trees. In fact the wind seemed to have stopped as well and instead there was a thick mist rising up from the water and wrapping itself around the beach. The world was hidden from her, though she thought she could see the faintest hint of the beam of her lighthouse in the distance, but it moved away and was hidden from view by the creature's massive form.

Shaw could see details now, huge scaled arms, a face of writhing tentacles, and eyes like black pits staring directly at her. She should have been scared, she knew, and she could feel something inside her like a strong tug that she thought might be trying to warn her that fear and flight were the correct response here, but instead she felt calm.

She slowly got to her feet and called back to Root, "Do you think you can stop the ritual? Or however you make this thing leave?" She wanted to turn to check on Root, but something told her not to look away from the creature.

"I...I think so…" Root's voice sounded strained. "I'll need your knife."

Shaw pulled the knife from its sheath and tossed it behind her onto the sand without turning her head. "You'd better not be about to do something dumb," she warned.

"Dumb, maybe, but not what you mean. I have no interest in dying here tonight, Shaw, and definitely not by my own hand. I just need a little--" There was a hiss of breath. "--blood. It may try to stop me, though, in which case we're both going to die very quickly and violently and then the rest of the world will follow shortly after."

"Just finish the ritual. I'll worry about this thing." Shaw wasn't sure why she was confident--maybe something about the way the creature before her emanated terror so forcibly that she could almost see it coming off of it in waves and yet none of it seemed to take root in her.

She took one step towards the creature and then another and another until she stood on the edge of the sigil staring directly up at it. She could now see huge wings unfurling from its back, dark and leathery and big enough to block out the entire sky. It must have been lying on its stomach, she guessed, its enormous legs still deep in the ocean. How large would it be when it stood upright? It would easily tower above the tallest building Shaw had ever seen. The creature opened its vast maw of teeth and tentacles wide and Shaw's dream came back to her. Had this been what she'd dreamt about, the thing that had ripped down her lighthouse?

The creature roared, a massive bellow that made her head ache and her bones vibrate. Its breath smelled of the brine of the ocean and rotting flesh. It lowered its head to stare directly at her and she could feel the fear it projected pressing at her like a solid weight. It wanted her to cower, to run, to die screaming in terror, and yet she couldn't have summoned up that fear even if she'd wanted to.

"You almost done, Root?" Shaw called back.

"I...yes...just another second." Shaw could hear the fear in Root's voice but she also heard determination.

The creature shook its massive head and droplets of water hit Shaw, each stinging like acid. She almost looked to see if she'd actually been hurt, but she didn't dare break eye-contact with the creature. Somehow she knew with absolute certainty that the only thing keeping the creature from destroying them both was its focus on trying to break her will. She stared into the creature's endless dark eyes and it stared right back into hers. The pressure she felt increased, like the creature was bending its entire will into breaking her down and reducing her to crawling in terror. She stood quietly in the face of its assault.

"That should do it," Root said from behind her.

Shaw felt someone step up near her and then Root's hand curled around one of her wrists.

"The spell will finish in the next minute and we need to get out of here before it does. So on my signal, we run."

"Won't it attack us if we leave the sigil?"

"Yes, but something much worse will happen if we don't."

Looking at the writhing tentacles above them, Shaw wasn't sure what could be worse and she really wasn't eager to find out.

"Now!" Root yanked her arm and they both turned and fled to the side. Shaw glimpsed the completed sigil out of the corner of her eye as they ran and saw the pattern had raised itself off the ground and was glowing with red light. Hopefully that was what it was supposed to do.

Behind them the creature screamed in rage and the beach trembled beneath Shaw's feet as she ran. She risked a glance back and saw one of the creature's arms swinging towards them like a battering ram.

"Get down!" she yelled and tackled Root to the ground.

A strong wind gusted overhead, forcing them down into the sand. Shaw grit her teeth and rolled onto her side just in time to see the huge, scaled arm swinging towards them again. She threw up her arm to shield her face from the wind and realized her mistake a second too late.

The creature's massive arm only brushed her raised arm the slightest bit, but it was enough to knock her through the air and send her flying down the beach. The world spun around her, pain exploded through her head, and everything went dark.

* * *

Shaw hadn't expected to wake up again and certainly not to wake up in her own bed back in the lighthouse. She slowly blinked awake and took in her empty bedroom in the beam of late afternoon light streaming through the window.

She tried to raise her arm to rub at her eyes and hissed in pain. Her whole left arm throbbed in agony.

Memories trickled back to her: the figures on the beach, the sacrifices, the creature in the ocean. Root. Where was Root?

She struggled to sit up, wincing as she jarred her injured arm. Her head was also throbbing and she dimly recalled that she must have hit it on something right at the end there. What had happened after that? Had Root's plan worked? If the lighthouse was still standing and Shaw was alive that suggested that the world hadn't ended.

Whoever had put Shaw in bed had stripped her of the clothes she'd been wearing and dressed her in a simple oversized shirt. She carefully got to her feet and made her way over to her clothes chest.

Root's seal skin was folded neatly on top of the chest and a wave of relief swept over Shaw. She hurried to dig out an old shirt she could use as a sling and pulled on a pair of pants (a bit awkwardly with only one functional arm).

She wasn't sure what impulse made her check the light room first, but she climbed the stairs up and found who she was looking for curled up asleep in her armchair. Root had dark circles under her eyes, a bruise on one cheek, and a bandage wrapped around her hand but otherwise looked okay.

Shaw went over to the windows to look out at the world. The ocean looked as it always had, grey, endless, and vast. There was no hint of the creature that she'd seen. From the other side of the tower she could see the town on shore, also looking unchanged. The shoreline was the only thing that was different, covered with downed trees and debris as if a great storm had swept through.

She had a lot of questions, but, in the absence of any obvious danger, she figured she could afford to let Root sleep for now. There was a blanket on the floor near the chair that Shaw guessed must have fallen off of Root while she slept. She draped it over Root before she went back downstairs.

She put the kettle on in the kitchen, figuring that some coffee would help wake her up, and set about examining her arm as she waited. It was definitely broken, but it seemed to have been a clean break and whoever had splinted it had done a decent job. She had an assortment of other nicks and bruises on her body, but nothing serious. There was a painful lump on the back of her head from where she'd hit the rocks, but there wasn't much she could do about that except hope she hadn't had her brains scrambled.

The sound of footsteps on the stairs drew Shaw's attention and she turned to see Root descending, wrapped in her blanket.

"Hey," Shaw said and wondered why she felt almost nervous now.

"Hey, sweetie." Root smiled and took the chair across from her. "How're you feeling?"

"Like a giant sea monster slammed my head into a rock. How about you?"

"Tired, but otherwise okay. Carrying you back to your boat and rowing to the island was more work than I'd expected, not to mention trying to get you up the stairs."

That explained how she'd gotten back. She wouldn't have thought Root strong enough to manage, but she could vividly remember Root ripping out a the mayor's throat on the beach with no effort. Selkie must be naturally strong--maybe later there'd be time to explore that further.

"Did you set my arm?" Shaw asked. "It's not a half-bad job. Didn't know you knew how to do stuff like that what with that time you showed up bleeding on my doorstep."

"No, I got a doctor from town to come out here and examine you."

"You got a doctor to come out to this place?"

"Well--" Root's lips curled up in a nasty smile. "--I did have to threaten her a bit."

Shaw laughed and then immediately grimaced as her head throbbed in response. "And what about, uh, that...thing? The creature. What the hell exactly happened back there?"

The kettle started whistling, sparing Root from having to answer immediately. Root rose to get it, waving Shaw back into her seat when she tried to get up. Shaw watched as Root prepared a cup of coffee and a cup of tea, finding the supplies with ease. Had she done this before?

"How long was I out for?"

"The better part of a day. I was starting to worry you might not wake up." Root set the steaming mug of coffee down in front of her and settled back into her seat, her long fingers wrapped around her own cup.

"So, the beach," Shaw prompted.

"Right. What did you want to know?"

"Everything?" Shaw thought back to what had happened that night. "What was that creature?"

"Something very, very old that should never have been woken up. Some say that it's a god, but my kind believes it's just another monster, slumbering in the depths of the ocean where humans can't find it."

"And the people on the beach? They were all from the town, right?"

Root nodded and curled her legs up in front of her on the chair. "The rich, old families of the town and a good number of the police force. You might have recognized your friend the chief of police and the town mayor. Some of them were there out of curiosity, but a few were true believers."

"What were they trying to do with that thing?"

Root laughed humorlessly. "I think most of them thought they could control it, use it to gain power. I guess they couldn't tolerate the indignity of being big fish in a small pond and took what they saw as an opportunity. Some of them though…." Root frowned at her tea. "Some of them knew exactly what would happen if they summoned it and they welcomed the end times the creature would have brought. The world would not have lasted long once it was fully freed."

"Why would they want to destroy the world? Wouldn't that kill them, too?"

Root shrugged. "You've lived here for five years, you know their dislike of outsiders, their fear of change since change is what they see taking away what little power they have. Perhaps they realized that there was no holding back the changes the world brought and decided to conquer it the only way they could--by destroying everything."

It felt extremely excessive to Shaw, but then she'd seen some of the worst that desperate, power-mad humans could do while she'd been in the army. "But you stopped it."

Root held up her bandaged hand. "I completed the sigil, but not the one they'd been trying to make. I sent it back to sleep."

"How'd you know how to do that? Does being part seal give you special knowledge in summoning ancient horrors from the ocean?"

Root chuckled. "Nothing as fancy as that. I've been watching them for months and I read their little summoning book. This is hardly the first time they've tried the summon the creature, just the only time they came close to succeeding. You should know all about the failed sacrifices, as they kept washing up on your doorstep. But this time, they switched the type of sacrifices." Root's mouth twisted into an angry grimace. "Those men on the beach they had tied up, they weren't human. They were something more like me, children of the ocean."

"Children of the ocean. You mean seal people, uh, selkies? Whatever you call yourselves. There's more of you?" Obviously there had to be, but somehow Shaw had never thought about it.

"No, other types of creatures, but similar in some ways." Root's face lightened a bit. "I still can hardly believe you stared down that creature with nothing but your own willpower. Truly the people of the town were smart to try and kill you. You were far more dangerous than they realized."

"Never been one to get scared, is all," Shaw said, though she was secretly pleased with the compliment. "And without fear that thing was just a giant, ugly squid with arms and legs." She finished her coffee off and put the mug down on the table. She almost felt like herself again. "Any chance someone tries to call that creature again?"

"Of course. These weren't the first humans to try, and they won't be the last, but I think we're safe for now." Root smiled around her mug. "All the members of their little cult were smashed into a pulp on the beach."

"Couldn't have happened to a nicer bunch of people." Shaw got up from the table. "I need to start getting the lighthouse ready for the night."

Root got up quickly as well. "I can give you a hand with that, you know, since you only have one to work with for now. I got the lantern working last night while you were asleep. It was a lot more complicated than I'd expected. All those years of watching the lighthouse and I had no idea how it worked."

"You ran the lighthouse last night? Why?" It was hard to imagine that Root would care about protecting sailors.

"Well, I didn't want you to get fired and sent away. There's still so many things for us to...explore together." Root's smile and raised eyebrow suggested exactly what was on her mind.

"Good point, but I don't need help," Shaw said, but now that she thought about it, she wasn't sure how she'd manage alone. The crank for the weights required two hands to operate no matter how strong she was.

"I know that, but I'd like to."

Shaw nodded, secretly relieved at Root's insistence. "Let's get started then."

They worked together in silence setting up the lighthouse for the night. Shaw trimmed the candle wicks while Root cranked the weights up. When they were done, Shaw begrudgingly allowed Root to herd her into the armchair and tuck a pillow behind her head. She didn't enjoy being fussed over usually, but perhaps it wasn't bad this once.

"Guess I need a second chair up here," Shaw said, looking around. "Or maybe a couch." She glanced up to see a strange look on Root's face. "Uh, I mean, unless you've got to take off and do...whatever it is you do out in the ocean."

"There's nowhere else I have any inclination to be at the moment." And before Shaw could protest, Root plopped down across her lap again, legs hanging over the arm of the chair.

"Root, this isn't--"

Isn't the type of thing I do, she had intended to say, but Root had carried her back and gotten a doctor and managed the lighthouse for her while she was unconscious, and if sitting in Shaw's lap (which wasn't really bad now that she'd gotten over her initial indignation) was what she wanted in return, then Shaw could deal with that. What came after this and how they managed that was something to discuss later (though she thought her opinion on that might have changed a bit at some point).

Root leaned her head sideways so it rested on the Shaw's shoulder and Shaw gave up on moving her.

"I take it you're going to stay here then?" Root asked as they watched the sun slip below the horizon. "Continue being the lighthouse keeper?"

"This place has grown on me. I'm not going to let some idiots and a squid chase me off." She paused uncertainly for a moment before asking, "What about you? Do you migrate to warmer waters or something?"

Root chuckled. "Not exactly. My kind go where they want quite freely."

"So is there somewhere you want to go?" She thought Root would stay around, keep swimming in the waters here, but she wanted to be sure. The thought of Root vanishing one day wasn't a good one.

Root shook her head. "No, Sameen, there isn't."

"Well...good." It would be...nice to have her living nearby like that, like having a neighbor who sometimes stayed the night. Or something along those lines. They could figure that out as they went.

Shaw quickly looked away from the smile on Root's face and focused her attention out the window. After all, there could be ships in trouble out there right now that required her assistance. Root settled in against her and together they watched the bright beam of the lighthouse shine out across the dark ocean.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> shaw should really be fired for multiple counts of dereliction of duty. seems likely there will be more dereliction in her future if root has her way.
> 
> idk how I went from cool lighthouse aesthetics to Shaw winning a staring match with cthulhu but hey. this was super fun to write and i hope you all enjoyed it.


End file.
